Part: Problems of Progressing
You’ve come up with a great-sounding seed of a musical idea. But now that you have it, you find that you don’t know how to proceed. Maybe it’s a few notes or a few bars, but it’s definitely not long enough to be a finished piece. You keep listening to the promising idea over and over again, unable to see a direction that will get you from here to a song.
There are a number of methods for generating many new ideas from the seed of one simple idea. Here are some recipes.
Most DAWs offer a range of note transformation features that allow you to make predictable, rule-based changes to a selection of notes. The resulting patterns will usually have a clear, organic connection to the original pattern, although they can often sound quite different. Some types of transformations include:
Transposition
Transposition means shifting an entire pattern of notes up or down by a specific number of semitones. In a transposition operation, the relationship between all of the notes in the pattern will remain unchanged. Many DAWs provide a quick way to transpose MIDI notes, but you can also do this manually by simply selecting a group of notes and dragging them vertically or horizontally to a new position on the piano roll. Transposition can also be applied to audio samples, although there will generally be some change to the timbre of the audio as a result.
Here is a one-measure-long MIDI phrase, followed by a version of that phrase that has been transposed up by five semitones:
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Inversion
Inversion (in this context) is the process of flipping a collection of notes “upside-down” so that the lowest note becomes the highest note and vice versa. The shape of the pattern and interval distance between each of the notes is maintained, but in the opposite direction of the original. This process can be applied in the MIDI domain, either via an automatic process built in to the DAW or by manually moving the notes. For example, here is a one-measure-long phrase, followed by a version of that phrase that has been inverted:
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Retrograde or Reverse
Retrograde means flipping a collection of notes backwards, so that the last note becomes the first note and vice versa. This process can be applied in the MIDI domain, either via an automatic process built in to the DAW or by manually moving the notes. Retrograde can also be applied in the audio domain, usually by applying a “Reverse” function to the sample. Note, however, that reversing a sample will also reverse the envelope contour of the audio itself, so the results will be quite different than a comparable process applied to the same MIDI.
Here’s an example of a one-measure-long MIDI phrase, followed by a version of that phrase that has been reversed:
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Note that in this particular retrograde algorithm, the distance between the note onsets is reversed. A true mirror image would mean that the note ends of the original became onsets in the reversed version. While literal mirroring is probably easier to understand conceptually, the results are often not particularly musically interesting.
Constraint to a Scale
A passage of MIDI notes can be selectively transposed so that the resulting pattern contains only notes that are within a particular scale. Many DAWs provide some type of device specifically for this purpose. These devices analyze incoming MIDI notes and remap them to an arbitrary pool of available notes before sending them out again.
Here’s an example of a one-measure-long MIDI phrase containing a somewhat random collection of notes, followed by a version of that phrase that has been constrained to the pitches within the C Major scale:
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Although the example above shows the actual notes that result from a scale-constraint process, note that many DAWs with MIDI processing devices apply their processing after the notes in the clip.
In order to get the notes you hear back into the original clip (as in the previous example), follow these steps:
Create a new MIDI track and set up your DAW’s inter-track routing so that the new track records the output of the original track.
Copy the newly-recorded notes to the clipboard.
Paste them back into the original clip.
Disable or remove the scale-constraint device.
Time Shifting
A looped passage of material can be started at an arbitrary position within the passage. This is effectively the same as maintaining the exact pitches and rhythms of the original pattern, but shifting the pattern right or left to a new location. Some DAWs allow you to adjust the playback start position for a particular pattern independently of any other patterns. In these environments, simply moving the pattern’s start position achieves this effect. Here’s an example of our original one-bar pattern with its start marker shifted three sixteenth notes to the right:
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In other DAWs, you can manually copy the entire pattern and paste it to the new location with the desired offset. When shifting to the right, keep in mind that material near the end of the original pattern will need to be “wrapped around” to the beginning of the new pattern, and vice versa when shifting to the left.
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Pitch Rotation
Pitch rotation is a process whereby the rhythm of a passage of notes is retained but the pitches from the passage are shifted to the right or left in time. Here’s an example of a one-measure-long MIDI phrase, followed by a version of that phrase that has been rotated to the right by three pitches. As with time shifting, pitches near the end of the pattern will need to be “wrapped around” to the beginning of the new pattern, and vice versa when shifting to the left.
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More Ways to Use the Transformations
Note that in all of these examples, the transformed version occurs immediately after the original. But of course, you could also treat the transformed version as an entirely separate, isolated pattern.
Conversely, you could also overlap the transformation with the original to create a more complex pattern:
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Or you could even superimpose them completely to create harmony:
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